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Benjamin Black

Biography

Benjamin Black

Benjamin Black is the pen name of the Man Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville. The author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed series of Quirke novels --- as well as THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE, a Philip Marlowe novel --- he lives in Dublin.

Benjamin Black

Books by Benjamin Black

Christian Stern, an ambitious young scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague intent on making his fortune at the court of the eccentric Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, he stumbles upon the body of a young woman whose throat has been slashed. Christian quickly finds himself entangled in the machinations of several ruthless courtiers, and before long he comes to the attention of the Emperor himself. Rudolf sets Christian the task of solving the mystery of the woman’s murder. But Christian soon realizes that he has blundered into the midst of a power struggle that threatens to subvert the throne itself. And as he gets ever nearer to the truth of what happened that night, he finally sees that his own life is in grave danger.

A car crashes into a tree in central Dublin and bursts into flames. The police assume the driver’s death was either an accident or a suicide, but Quirke believes otherwise. Then his daughter, Phoebe, gets a mysterious visit from an acquaintance, who later disappears. Phoebe asks her father for help, and Quirke in turn seeks the assistance of his old friend, Inspector Hackett. Before long, the two men find themselves untangling a twisted string of events that takes them deep into a shadowy world where one of the city’s most powerful men uses the cover of politics and religion to make obscene profits.

It is the early 1950s, Philip Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. In walks a beautiful young woman who wants Marlowe to find her former lover, Nico Peterson. Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson’s disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.

In 1950s Ireland, the Catholic Church controls the lives of nearly everyone. But when Quirke’s daughter Phoebe loses her close friend Jimmy Minor to murder, Quirke can no longer play by the Church’s rules. Along with Inspector Hackett, his sometime partner, Quirke investigates Jimmy’s death and learns just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.

Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland's most successful businessmen, kills himself while sailing with his partner's son. Detective Inspector Hackett calls upon the services of his sometime partner Quirke, consultant pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family. But when a second death occurs, this one even more shocking than the first, it quickly becomes apparent that a terrible secret threatens to destroy the lives and reputations of several members of Dublin's elite.

On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell --- known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick --- is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For help with the investigation, Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has unusual access to Dublin's elite.

It has been two years since the events of CHRISTINE FALLS, the bestselling novel that introduced the world to an irascible Dublin pathologist named Quirke. When a near-forgotten acquaintance asks him to cover up his beautiful young wife’s apparent suicide, Quirke knows he should stay clear, but his old itch is irresistible, and before long he is probing further into the circumstances of Deidre Hunt’s death, into a web of drugs and illicit sex that may have snared his own daughter, Phoebe.